


The Fall

by TheBohemian



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dorks in Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Realization, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3172410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBohemian/pseuds/TheBohemian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren realizes that Armin has a pretty big, glaring crush on him. So, he decides to take it upon himself to try and discover exactly when these feelings blossomed. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncI1ZJJIUzU">Based on this song.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> An anon on Tumblr requested a one shot for a prompt of their own, and here I am to deliver!  
> If you have any suggestions for me, please feel free to visit me at erenjjearger.tumblr.com and leave an ask!

"Eren, I have a question to ask you," Jean Kirschtein announced as he neared the desolate table that Eren inhabited.

Ordinarily, Jean's intrusions and questions were never welcome, but as his unspoken best friend on the down-low, it was Eren's job to bite. So, he did. "What?"

Dramatically, Jean cleared his throat and clamped a hand on Eren's shoulder, squeezing until Eren could feel the lasting imprints of his fingertips. "Have you always been such a dense motherfucker?"

Out of instinct, Eren tried to move to his feet, but Jean kept him pinned to his seat. "Chill out. I'm not picking a fight with your ego. Its a legit question."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Eren spat as he jerked his shoulder from Jean's grasp.

In response, Jean took the seat adjacent to Eren's. Eren caught the sight of Jean's arm moving past him, but was completely taken off guard when his chin was caught between Jean's thumb and forefinger. With his face forcefully turned towards Jean, it was impossible to look away.

"Yeah, I know you don't. That's the problem. The way I figure it is that you have to either be oblivious, blind, or dense to not see that Armin is head over heels for you. The latter seems like the best option, so I'm playing Cupid and helping things along."

"For some reason," Eren's words were garbled thanks to Jean relinquishing hold on his chin, "I imagined that cupid would be much more handsome."

Rolling his eyes, Jean pulled his hand away and stood, hands in pockets. "Go fuck yourself, Jaeger. I'm doing you a favor. Think long and hard on it, you absolute dinglenut."

"Butt cork."

"Chode."

Jean finally left when Eren cracked an inevitable smile.

 

Eren had become a professional at ignoring anything and everything Jean had to say, but this time something was different. It stuck with him like an itch in the back of his mind, demanding attention. After only a few minutes of being alone with his thoughts, Eren was lost to them. 

He and Armin had been friends for a long time, nearly six years, and they were sickeningly close according to their group of friends. It had even gotten to a point where, on occasion, Eren had been stopped in the halls and asked if he and Armin were dating by curious girls who didn't understand boundaries. Eren couldn't point that out, though. Armin had told him plenty of times that he didn't know the meaning of the word boundary. 

He'd never paid any mind to it, anyway. It never seemed to matter.

He was allowed to be close to other guys. There was no law against it, and if there was, he'd never gotten the memo.

 

Under the circumstances of old, it was easy to discredit all of those questions and lingering eyes. But, now... now, circumstances had changed drastically.

Now, it was hard to brush aside the times that Armin's eyes had lingered just a while too long or how fast he was too pull his hand away when they bumped in the bowl of popcorn. It never really seemed strange when Armin was hesitant to share a bed or even a bedroom. Eren was convinced he only wanted his privacy.

The blushing, the faint smiles, downcast eyes, and fiddling fingers suddenly made sense in Eren's mind, and he wondered just how long he'd been missing the signs.

When had Armin Arlert fallen for someone like him, and more importantly, how had he gotten so lucky.

He wracked his mind to pinpoint the exact moment his best friend had fallen in love right before his eyes, and he certainly didn't fall short of encounters to choose from. He figured the first time they met was a good place to start.

 

It was cold on the night that Eren ran away from home, and the fates assigned him a new best friend. 

This wasn't some ordinary cold, though, oh no, it was far worse. It was the kind of cold that cut to the bone, drew tears to eyes, and made his sinuses impersonate Niagara Falls. 

Eren wiped his nose with the sleeve of his ratty jacket and kept walking, undeterred and refusing to turn around. He didn't actually know where he was going, or if he was going anywhere at all. The only thing that was clear to him was that he was going away.

 Walking to the bus stop generally took 15 minutes at most, but those fifteen minutes were the longest of Eren's entire life. Cold snaked beneath his pants legs as he walked and twisted in viscous tendrils, clamping onto his skin until he was completely numb. His face felt statue-like, carved in ice, tear tracks frozen solid as crystals formed at the ends of his eyelashes. 

In the white wash of the city, covered in sleet and snow, Eren had expected to be completely alone on his journey to no where in particular, but, in the distance, a figure sat slumped under the bus awning. Unmoving and probably frozen the core, but still there nonetheless. 

 

In school, Eren had been taught about mirages: visions that occur when one has been subjected to severe heat and dehydration. Never once had anyone mentioned that they could occur when one had had too much root beer and their brain had frozen solid, but Eren was almost entirely sure that the boy under the overhanging was nothing more than an illusion.

Only the most self depreciating and suicidal bastards would sit through this weather without so much as a single complaint. 

As Eren neared the shelter, it became increasingly clear that the other boy was no illusion, rather he was very real and very cold. Eren approached with caution, something in the back of his mind screamed to run because he'd probably stumbled upon some sort of dead body, but the rest of his mind, thankfully, told that smaller portion to shut the fuck up. 

With an arm extended in warning, Eren took slow steps toward the slumped figure, icy blonde head tilted to be parallel with the earth. Snow lingered at the roots and dripped through the longer strands, puddling on the ground below in a slick patch of black ice. 

"Hey," Eren said, voice gruff from the ache in his throat. The bitter wind was to blame. "Hey, are you okay? Do you need a doctor or an oven to sit in or something?"

When the other boy didn't move, the voice in his head gave smug conformation that he had definitely found a dead body.

Only the soft puff of steam from the boys mouth clued Eren that he was still, in fact, breathing. 

"Look, buddy," Eren tried again, inching closer, almost as if he was approaching a rabid dog, "I'm only 12. I don't know how to bury people, yet, and I don't even have a shovel."

When Eren pressed his hand against the still figure's shoulder, the boy jolted to life, gasping with eyes wide and glassy. 

"Fuck!" Eren shouted and stumbled back slipping on ice and finding himself stumbling into a dirty snow bank with flailing limbs and nothing to cling to. Black grime clung to the snow heap from where it had been scraped out of the streets; it stained the fabric of his jackets and grayed his hands. While on his back, Eren could clearly see every star that dotted the cloudless night sky. It was brighter than any night he'd ever seen, Eren remembered. 

"Oh my God!" The boy screamed. 

There was a soft  _thump thump_ as the boy forced himself onto his feet and ran to Eren's aid. Frosty fingers linked together as the other boy tried to heave Eren upright, only to lose his footing on the cement and fall face first into the same snow bank that had barely cushioned Eren's decent.

Eren scrambled to his knees, painfully, and rolled the boy onto his back, hovering over him.

"Are you okay?" He whispered.

The boy shrugged though blood was smeared across his lip. Ice had nicked him, Eren figured. 

"Would you be okay if I bought coffee?" Eren pushed, "Mom says I'm not allowed to have it after 3, but I think this is a special case."

After a short span of consideration, the boy nodded with a weak smile playing on his lips, "probably."

 

They had to take turns practically carrying one another to the nearest 24 hour cafe. With arms slung over shoulders and around waists, they walked on. 

Two blocks, though seemingly short, is a mighty haul when your pants legs are frozen and your blood has been turned into a new flavor of Icee. They both learned why insulated clothing existed in a relatively short amount of time. 

The trek was worth it if only for the warmth the diner provided. The cafe, owned by three older women, was kept at roughly the same temperature of Satan's asshole, so it was a good place to thaw and break his mother's rules for the second time in the same night.

Eren held the cup gingerly to his lips, eyes resting on the boy who was hunched in on himself, attempting to collect as much heat as possible.

To break the silence, Eren opted to speak first by giving his name.

The boy on the opposite booth studied him, and Eren noticed that his eyes were still glassy.

"Do you- you do speak English right? Because I don't think I can find a translator around here. I mean A) you're in the south and B) everyone here is a racist asshole who doesn't even want to push one for English. Much less learn a second-"

"I speak English," the boy said immediately. "I'm Armin, and I speak English."

"Okay," Eren said, leaning over the able and dabbed at the now dried and flaking blood at the corner of Armin's lips. "I'm Eren."

"You said that," the boy, Armin, smiled as his already raw face turned a deeper shade of pink.

Eren flushed with him. "Yeah," he allowed his hand to drop.

"That's okay though," Armin said quickly, " l like your name."

"I like yours, too," Eren spoke to his hands, folded in his lap. "I'm wondering, though, why the hell were you outside?"

Armin sat back with pursed lips and pushed his coffee away. "My parents don't want me anymore."

"What?"

"I made some really bad grades. Like really bad. I made a C in Science," Armin explained, "they said they were disappointed and that I knew better and-"

"That doesn't mean they don't want you," Eren interjected, "dad tells me I disappoint him all the time," he sounded almost proud of the fact. "You get used to it."

Armin seemed doubtful, but he didn't press the issue. "Why were you?"

"Mom's sick. Dad's in charge. Dad and I don't get along. No big deal."

"Oh," Armin whispered.

Eren shrugged.

 

As it turned out, Eren was right, and Armin's parents did still want him. That fact was made evident when dawn's light began to creep through the slits in the diner's blinds, glaring in the boys' eyes, and the bell on the front door tinkled, greeting the morning's first customer. 

The old man who walked through the door was hunched with white hair and a smile so wide his eyes disappeared behind it. He gave the place a once over and stopped cold when his eyes landed on their corner booth. Armin squirmed almost uncomfortably in his seat as the old man made way to bid them good morning.  He dropped his walking stick the moment he reached the table, so he could be able to pull Armin from his seat and capture him in the longest hug Eren had ever witnessed. 

Armin didn't miss a beat when introducing the two despite having the life squeezed out of him.

"I have to call your parents and tell them I found you!" His apparent grandfather was completely out of breath, but he shuffled towards the door like a track star, "don't you go anywhere, understood?"

Armin nodded in response as his grandfather went on the hunt for a pay phone.

"We're friends now, right?" Armin asked, seated on his knees to make himself seem taller.

"Definitely," Eren agreed.

"Okay," Armin bit his lip anxiously, "do you want to come home with me?"

 

Once Eren went home with Armin, he rarely left.

 

They lived in the den of the Arlert's small, but suiting, home for all intents and purposes. They slept there, ate there, played video games there. The den was home, and because of their close proximity, they were able to see the best and worst sides of each other early on. 

Eren endured Armin's horrid bedhead while Armin suffered through Eren's intolerable morning breath. They accidentally wore one another's clothes more often than not until finally they'd resolved to just sharing a closet. 

The spark in Armin's eye never changed or dimmed, if anything it only grew when Eren was around.

 

For Armin's sixteenth birthday, his grandfather dragged them both to four museums scattered throughout a forty mile radius of their home. Armin, being the nerd he was, was ecstatic. Eren took a little more convincing. 

He'd been promised food, and that was enough motivation to tag along.

Really, his time spent looking at objects that held no importance to him wasn't so bad. He couldn't think of a single reason to complain when Armin had his hand clamped over his own while dragging him from showcase to showcase. Armin rattled off the scripts found on engraved plaques to save Eren the struggle of trying. 

When he would get excited, Armin would gasp and squeeze Eren's hand until it had turned numb and prickled every time he moved it to his own accord. 

As a small apology, Armin bought him snacks and force fed him ice cream even after he'd said he was full. 

When he laughed, Eren would hear bells, and the open sky didn't hold a candle to the vastness in Armin's eyes. He hadn't noticed at the time, but God he wished he had. 

He still felt Armin's fingers push his hair back. "Eren you're going to have to wash your hair like five times tonight. Why don't you just pull it back?" He'd asked.

Eren, being the tough and careless guy he so clearly was, only shrugged. "I'll manage."

Sighing, Armin would eat from the same spoon he'd just shoved past Eren's lips, and Eren would stare at the grass as a weird, unnamed feeling churned in the pit of his stomach. He dismissed it, just as did with everything else. 

 

That Christmas, he and Armin had competed to see who could spend the most money on the other person, and Armin had won by a landslide. It was barely a competition, Armin knew Eren better than he knew himself. He didn't have to ask a single time what Eren had wanted, rather he would flee into a store, giving the instruction for Eren to remain where we was until a few minutes later he would reappear with a new bag draped over his forearm.

"Onto the next," he would say, and Eren would be sure to listen, following wherever he was guided. 

Armin, wearing his Christmas hat and over-sized sweaters, was the embodiment of Christmas spirit. Even down to the rosy cheeks and boundless cheer.

Eren had never been one to invest much sentiment in holidays, but Armin was enough to change all that. Armin shined brighter than the lights strung from homes and was warmer than the fires families sat nestled by.

Suddenly, despite the cold and misery that came with the holiday, Christmas was his favorite day of the year. 

 

The following year was a slow one as far as things to do were concerned. That hardly changed when Armin told Eren they were going bird watching.

Eren was game for many things he'd never tried; he figured almost anything could be made at least slightly interesting. He hadn't accounted for bird watching, though. Anything but that. 

"No," Eren shook his head when the idea was proposed on a warm May afternoon. 

Armin huffed, cheeks blown into large bulbs. "Eren!"

"Dude, that's what Google is for," Eren thumbed through new options on Netflix as he spoke. "It's great. You ever seen Google images? What kind of bird do you wanna see, buddy? I got you."

As if to prove his point, Eren held his phone in the air, web page open and ready.

"I want to go outside," Armin countered.

"Okay. Have fun. Watch out for mosquitoes."

When Armin latched onto his forearm, Eren slowly looked up. With eyes wide and lip caught between his teeth, Armin pulled at his arm again. "You have to come with me."

It was hardly a fair fight, and, in the end, Eren found himself bird watching. As if they were ten years old, both boys ran to the back yard and sprawled out in the grass, back to back with eyes on the trees.

The sun shined brighter and the flowers were more vivid when Armin was around, Eren noticed. Armin seemed oblivious to it, but he made everything better and brighter just by existing.

When Armin tilted his head against Eren's shoulder in the quiet, his heart jolted somewhere into his throat. Blonde hair tickled Eren's neck. His mind raced, but with as much calm and cool he could collect, Eren propped his head atop his friend's. His focus was far past the birds that whistled their songs in tree tops far past his line of vision. 

His stomach preformed an impressive somersault which was immediately passed off as hunger. 

As they sat silently, birds returned to the wooded around behind the Arlert house. Of course, Armin acted as a breathing encyclopedia, naming each and every bird they saw with attributes and habits included.

"You're a fucking nerd," Eren laughed under his breath. 

Armin shifted, "you're the one who agreed to watch birds."

"Don't tell my friends."

"We'll see."

 

"Eren!" 

Armin's voice ripped him out of his own head, and the sound of a lunch tray clattering against the table did an excellent job of returning him to reality. 

Stuttering and blushing were all Armin got in return. 

Slowly, and with intention, Armin sat in his normal seat, eyebrow raised with suspicion. "Are you okay?"

Eren clenched his jaw and un-clenched just as slowly as the wheels in his mind spun lazy circles. Words were foreign and his tongue felt thick. 

Despite his pondering, Eren wasn't sure when Armin had fallen for him, but he could pinpoint with precise clarity the exact moment Armin had stolen all of his affection. 

The first moment he'd seen those eyes, that smile, and heard that laugh, Eren was a sure goner who was really good at pretending not to notice. 

Maybe he was a little dense. 

 

"Armin," Eren said, eyes glued to the peaches that had sloshed onto the other boy's tray when he'd tried to catch Eren's attention.

"Hm?"

"I need to ask you something."

Armin was unfazed, willing to answer anything. "Okay. What's it about? Do you have another book you need to read for English? Or is it math?"

Eren cut to the chase before he lost the balls to do so. "I can tell you the exact moment I fell for you," he said quickly, hand covering his mouth, "so, I was wondering, when did you fall for me?"

Armin leaned back, jaw unhinged and eyes unblinking. "What?"

"I have some feelings for you that friends shouldn't have for other friends," his voice was a whisper that was barely audible above the roar of the cafeteria, "I'm pretty sure it's mutual. I may not be able to read books, but I  _can_ read my best friend. I hope. So, can you tell me when? I can't figure it out."

Armin leaned forward and propped his elbows against the table as he spun his hair around his pointer finger. His lower lip was stuck between his teeth, and Eren had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from telling Armin how much how loved when he did that.

"You made me bust my lip in dirty snow," Armin said, "and then you bought me coffee with the pennies in your pocket. It was that simple."

"Some standards you got there, dude. Violent and broke."

"Shut up," Armin spoke to his plate, and his cheeks all but glowed. To keep his hands from fidgeting, he reached and pulled his long hair to one side, picking at the ends he could see. 

 

His stomach flipped, jumped and danced. His head pounded. His cheeks hurt from both too much biting and too much smiling.

There are certain kinds of happiness reserved for only the best situations, and Eren was sure that this was the happiest feeling anyone could ever achieve before reaching some sort of enlightenment. Nirvana. Something.  

"After school," Eren said, "we're going to the cafe on the corner. Suddenly, I feel like coffee."

"It'll be after three by then," Armin said, kicking Eren's feet under the table. 

"I think this qualifies as a special case. Besides, mom doesn't have to know."

Armin smiled and picked a sliced peach with his fork, waving it in the air a bit before plopping it in his mouth. 

"Probably," he concluded. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Fall [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8871793) by [StillSinging](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StillSinging/pseuds/StillSinging)




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